Tag: HTML5 Video

The fight between HTML5 videos and Flash videos has been going on for a long time. Of course Flash has the upper edge with the videos right now because of features it has. On the other hand, HTML5 videos are still in its infancy with support for only few codecs.

In addition to being able to play HTML5 videos, YouTube mobile player is also faster than the earlier one and also incorporates a larger and more touch-friendly elements making it easier to access videos on your mobile phone. YouTube mobile now also supports search suggestions (see screenshot above) and allows users to like, unlike and favorite videos from your mobile device.

According to the Google, YouTube has grown over 160% in 2009 YoY and are now playing more than 100 million videos on mobile devices a day, this is roughly equal to the number of daily playbacks YouTube.com did in 2006. Currently YouTube.com does over 2 billion video views per day.

To access the new HTML5 player on your iDevice or other mobile devices which have a HTML5 compliant browser, just head over to m.youtube.com and try out the new video player. Watch a video of the new YouTube Mobile in action or visit the official announcement post here.

Mozilla is trying to incorporate the VP8 codec of WebM video into the HTML5 web video specification.

Mozilla Chief Executive John Lilly, replied on being asked about this saying,

We’d love for VP8 to be specified in the HTML5 standard. Once it’s in the spec, it can really get better traction from other players.

This is a bold move by Mozilla as most other browsers are in support of H.264 currently. If this change is made, adding videos into web pages will be as easy as adding jpeg images. The current implementation of HTML5 video has no standard for video encoding and requires the web page developer to incorporate all popular web formats for the video in the page to be available across all browsers.

Before Google released VP8, there was tough competition between H.264, preferred by Apple and Microsoft, and Ogg Theora, backed by Mozilla and Opera. Now, with its better quality and open source nature, VP8 has better winning prospects in this race.

The next move Mozilla needs to make is to get some allies to support VP8 alongside itself. VP8 already sees some favor from W3C which says,

WebM/VP8 has the potential of providing a solution for the baseline video format of HTML5.

Apart from Mozilla and a part of W3C, Microsoft also supports VP8 and we too expect to see VP8 as the default HTML5 video.
(Source)

At Google I/O Google, Mozilla and Opera have announced a new alternative for video content in HTML5.

The video codec for HTML5 has been a major bone of contention with Apple siding with H.264 instead of Ogg. Microsoft has offered support for H.264 too. Today, Google, Mozilla and Opera have come up with another alternative to this debate. Known as WebM, the format is based on the VP8 technology Google acquired with On2 Technologies. CNET reports that the audio uses Ogg Vorbis.

Given that the video codec to be used with HTML5 hasn’t been finalised and browser makers are free to use their own, Opera, Firefox and Chrome will be using WebM. The format seems to have a massive momentum behind it with the three major cross-platform browsers behind it.

HTML5 Videos is a very big feature which will render Flash videos almost useless, however not every browser supports HTML5 yet, the few that do also are either development versions or beta versions.

So, as a developer how would you switch to HTML videos? Well, there is a way by using a new JavaScript API which adds support for the HTML5 <video> tag in all browsers.

The API in question is called “html5media” and makes use of jQuery to display the default HTML5 video player if the browser supports it, or defaults to Flowplayer if the browser does not support it.

This will ensure that your <video> tag will play in all browsers, irrespective of whether they support it or not, definitely a good way to start using HTML5 videos in your project.

The only downside of this API is that you will have to include a JavaScript library in all pages that you want to insert the HTML5 videos in as shown below.

Once you do that, the html5media JavaScript library will take care of displaying the videos to both HTML5 browsers as well those which do not support it.

Download and Learn more about html5media. You can also view the demo of the script in action by visiting this page on a HTML5 compliant browser and one which does not support it. The only downside of this is that your video needs to be encoded in either the h.264 codec (mp4) or Theora codec (ogv).

Internet Explorer is one of the several mainstream browsers which do not support HTML5 videos which is now being beta tested by YouTube and Vimeo. However, what Microsoft could not do yet has been done by a codec developer.

The software in question, Xiph.Org Ogg Codec provides users with an option to add support for the <video> tag in Internet Explorer, in turn allowing IE to play HTML5 videos.

I installed the codec and enabled the HTML5 support, and gave it a test run on Internet Explorer 8. The videos from YouTube played just fine, however, it is not a perfect solution yet and a bit buggy. Some videos took way too long to load, and some never played at all. Nevertheless, something is better than nothing right?

Note: Before you can view HTML5 videos in YouTube, you will have to join the beta club by visiting this link http://www.youtube.com/html5. After that you will have to copy the <video> code to a new HTML page to watch the video and follow the instructions given here.

Techie Buzz Verdict

This software is not perfect yet, so use it at your own risk. Another problem I saw was that the software did not provide an option to disable HTML5 videos once it was installed, so the only way to disable it is to uninstall the software. Once it is enabled, you will not be able to watch videos on YouTube due to the restrictions with adding a additional attribute to the video code.

Again, this is a tool which is still being developed, so I think that it will definitely become better with time. However, if you are someone who does not like to mess up with things, stay away from it.

I would suggest you to download and use Google Chrome instead, if you are looking forward to experiencing HTML5 videos.

For the past several years, video sites like YouTube and Vimeo have changed how we watch videos online, and Flash has played a very big role in it. However, in my personal experience, Flash has been one of the biggest pain in the browsers, and watching videos has not been that rosy, not just for me but for several others too.

With the official introduction of HTML5 looming around the corner, several websites and browsers have started to implement the new features available in it. One of the most exciting feature in HTML5 is that it has support for streaming videos through the <video> tag, without having to use any other additional resources or software such as Flash.

Both YouTube and Vimeo have officially started supporting HTML5 videos, which is pretty exciting and will definitely shape the future on how we watch videos online. The most exciting features in HTML5 videos is that you can watch it in fullscreen, just like you would do it on a desktop player, and no more buffering, simply jump to any part of the video you want, again this experience is similar to desktop players.

To watch HTML5 supported videos on your browser visit http://www.youtube.com/html5 or go to Vimeo and click on the "Switch to HTML5 Player" link at the bottom of the video page. Please note that you browser has to be HTML5 compatible in order to view the videos. Right now YouTube and Vimeo only support Webkit based browsers, including Safari and Google Chrome, with support for IE with the Chrome Frame add-in installed.